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Dr. Clark explains how anxiety can contribute to a woman's sexual dysfunction.
Dr. Clark:
Well anxiety is a distortion of fear. Anxiety is excessive worry about anything and of course with sexuality, there’s a great deal of fear related to that women often learn about sex with the strongest, you know, whether it’s community or family or religion or cultures, there’s a lot of, I think, female negativity or just the disinformation about sexuality.
Females are not encouraged to be physical. Sex is physical. The pleasure is physical and if you are not encouraged to be physical in a physical activity you get problems. And so, the problems that females have often have to do with emotions and of course the biology because that changes, you know, the mind and the body are one, they work together and they affect each other, affect and effect each other and so therefore the women have a lot of, as we see in conference here, lot of complains and difficulties with sexuality because there are a lot of restrictions on a female being physical. You know, the worst thing you can say about a female has to do with negative sexual connotations, all the excessive comments, and you know, all the… usually it has to do with sexuality.
So a female can learn very fearful approach or no approach at all to sexuality and therefore you have a lot, you know the highest frequency of sexual concerns is no desire, low desire, difficulty with stimulation, difficulty with orgasm and of course a lot of this is natural. Orgasm is a natural aspect. I mean, we have orgasms in our sleep, males and females – wet dreams, and so even if we do not masturbate or are present with a partner and stimulate ourselves we will have an orgasm in our sleep.
So the body, it’s a natural reaction, just it’s as simple and as physical and as natural as sneezing. There’s a stimulation and then a release and that’s as simple as an orgasm is and yet, if many women, or a number of women have difficulty with it, we want to look at the training and the negative input from all those factors, you know, whether it’s family, culture, community, religion that women have learned about their sexuality.
About Dr. Mary M. Clark, Ph.D.:
Mary McGinn Clark, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist (PSY17897), Marriage and Family Therapist (MFC17748) and an AASECT Certified Diplomate in Sex Therapy with over 25 years of experience working with people. She addresses sexuality, relationship and intimacy concerns for individuals and couples. She has taught at the University of San Diego, SDSU, MiraCosta and Grossmont Community Colleges and presented material at UCSD and at professional conventions.
Visit Dr. Clark at San Diego Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital